Estate agents should use SMS to collect information

Text messages should be used by estate agents not only to promote their business, but also to collect information, it has been claimed.

Ben Bernstein, social marketing manager at online video firm Viewbix, wrote on business2community.com that an SMS service could be just the thing to help such property professionals find out more about their target consumers.

He said: ‘While you’re out and about, don’t miss anything when you have fully utilized texting SMS services for collecting and organizing phone numbers and being able to blast out information over SMS for marketing promotions. SMS through email and SMS shortcodes are some of the ways you can do that.’

The text message was just one of five marketing technologies recommended by Mr Bernstein to help estate agents to improve their advertising strategies; the others were social networks, email marketing programmes, lead generation software and video editing systems.

SMS services were also recently discussed by appstechnews.com writer Matthew Henkes, who pointed out that the text message celebrated its 20th birthday this month and yet is still hugely relevant, even in the face of competition from social media and other messaging systems.

Mr Henkes pointed out that two other industries that have adopted SMS are healthcare and banking, not only in the UK but internationally too.